Fassbaender has conceived the rewarding idea of marrying Brahms's cycle with the tale, by Ludwig Tieck, that inspired it. Thus, she prefaces every song with the appropriate section of the story, so that we are involved in the adventures of Peter and his beautiful love Magelone. We see before us the lovely girl, the handsome knight who entrances her and Magelone's go-between nurse; then follow their courtship, so rudely interrupted by natural forces (an interfering raven, always a symbol of evil in this imaginary world), Peter's adventures in a Moorish country, his escape and eventual and improbable reunion with his beloved for the happy end. Each of Brahms's songs captures the mood—happy, histrionic and sad—of the moment it illustrates in the text.
It makes for a fascinating essay in narrative and music, and nobody is better equipped than Fassbaender to play the dual role of speaker and singer. She reads the high romantic text with as much emotional and intellectual control as she sings Brahms's pieces, which are greatly improved by being heard in context. So the whole project is an unalloyed pleasure. Whether it's the well-known lullaby ''Ruhe, Sussliebchen'', here successfully brought off at a perilously slow tempo, the turbulent seas depicted in ''So tonet denn schaumende Wellen'', the flighty song of the Sultan's daughter (who also falls for Peter), ''Geliebter, wo zaudert'', or the heavy melancholy of Magelone's lament when she imagines herself deserted by Peter (''Wie schnell verschwindet''), Fassbaender is there with the right response. Her singing is, as ever, finely tailored to the music in hand yet given the benefit of her highly spiced, individual style.
She is partnered by the like-minded Leonskaja, something of a Brahms specialist, who plays the piano parts with welcome authority. She is nicely balanced with the singer in an exemplary recording. The whole project is a success and certainly the best way to encounter this music. Accept no substitutes.'